MSW Students for Salinas PD Transparency

Dear Community Partners:

We are a group of San Jose State University Master of Social Work students working on a social change campaign. Our objective is to increase transparency around law enforcement’s approach to incidents involving people concurrently experiencing homelessness and behavioral health issues. In this interest, we have reached out to the Salinas Police Department requesting an informational meeting.

The purpose of this letter is twofold:
- An ask for narrative submissions regarding law enforcement interactions with people concurrently experiencing homelessness and behavioral health issues; and
- An offer of support for your work in any capacity we are able to perform.

We would love to know about what work you're doing related to this topic and what success in the area of law enforcement interactions with mentally distressed populations looks like in your work.

Please respond by commenting on this post or messaging us.

Thank you for all that you do,

Karena Brewington, An Bui, Vanessa Espinoza, Jasmine Jimenez, and Lizbeth Tovar

Hi Community, this is the email we sent to the Salinas Police Department on April 15, 2022 to request more information about their training on responding to community members experiencing co-occurring homelessness and behavioral health disorders.

Dear Police Chief Roberto Filice:

We are Master of Social Work (MSW) students at San José State University writing on behalf of our community members who experience co-occurring homelessness and behavioral health disorders in Salinas.

We are requesting a virtual 30-45 minutes informational meeting to learn more about the current training practices the Salinas Police Department implements to support those experiencing homelessness and behavioral health disorders. Please find the questions for this meeting linked here, and attached in .pdf and .doc formats for your review before our meeting.

Please let us know what communication platform could work best for you.

If you are unavailable to meet, we would really appreciate a response to our questions via email.

It is important for us to advocate for trauma-informed and accessible care for our community members, because it is important to improve positive health outcomes. We enthusiastically support more transparency about the training within the department to increase first responder competency and care. This informational meeting aligns with our goal to support the recovery of our community members experiencing co-occurring homelessness and behavioral health disorders.

Sincerely,

Karena Brewington, An Bùi, Vanessa Espinoza, Jasmine Jimenez, Lizbeth Tovar
MSW Candidates Class of 2023
School of Social Work
San José State University